


Seven Unconnected Thoughts About Marriage

by clavicular



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/F, Female-Centric, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:24:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clavicular/pseuds/clavicular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ann's relationship with love, life and Leslie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Unconnected Thoughts About Marriage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



1.

“Waffles?” Ann offers.

“Hnggrflh?” Leslie mumbles, from the couch.

Technically she’s been awake half an hour already, but it’s the weekend and she’s only on her second cup of coffee, so it’ll be at least a good hour before she’s completely functional. Ann sets the plate down in front of her and waits for the smell to waft its way to Leslie’s brain cells.

“ _Waffles_ ,” Leslie says, and reaches for the whipped cream.

Ann’s not sure if adult women are supposed to do sleepovers like this. If she thinks about it too much, it seems childish, like it should be a thing of the past. She likes it though. Maybe too much, because sometimes it doesn't seem so childish. Sometimes it seems like something else entirely, and Ann tries not to think about that. The thought is too dangerous to make Ann feel this safe.

Leslie’s hair is ruffled on one side and totally limp on the other, and there’s a smudge of cream on her chin that she’s trying to reach with her tongue. Ann steals a bite of her waffle while she’s distracted.

She’s pretty sure she could do this forever.

 

2.

Ann’s not sure she’s ever been very good at being... a person. Being _herself_. She’s never even given much thought to who she wants to be. Everything she knows about herself is something she’s fallen into and it hardly ever feels permanent. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for her to lose herself every time she starts a new relationship.

“You’ll figure it out as you get older,” her mother told her once, long before Ann really understood the problem. “The right man will make you feel more like you, not less.”

Ann doubts she’s met that man, or that she’s ever likely to. She thinks she knows what her mother meant, though.

 

3.

Alone on the vast double bed after she finally – _finally –_ kicks Andy out, Ann watches the hours tick by on her glowing cell phone screen. She hasn’t cried, she doesn’t even feel like she wants to, but there’s an empty chasm gaping inside her where her heart should be. She knew it was coming. It had been building a long time. Even if she told herself things were fine she… Andy was never someone she’d been able to imagine spending the rest of her life with.

She hoped, though, and maybe that was just the fear of being alone, but she hoped.

Ann jumps as the phone begins vibrating in her hand.

“Ann? It’s Leslie. I just got your message and I’m on my way right now. Everything will be fine, just keep breathing and wait for me to get there. Cry if you need to. I have ice-cream.”

Leslie gets all this out in one breath, and Ann’s so busy marvelling she forgets to reply.

“Ann? Do you need me to remind you how to breathe?”

“Woah, Leslie, I’m fine. You don’t have to come over here. I dumped him, remember? It’s not a big deal.”

“No time for that, Ann, I’m almost there.”

Ann hears tyres screeching outside. She buries her face in the pillows, groaning, but even as she does it, a soft warmth blossoms inside her chest.

“I’m not really in the mood to be cheered up,” Ann says, opening the door.

Leslie’s face falls for a fraction of an instant, but she rallies immediately, shoving the binder in her arms back into her bag too fast for Ann to read the cover and pulling out another one. This one reads _Ways to Help Ann Remember What a Lazy Jerkface Andy Was and that She Deserves So Much Better_. Leslie raises her eyebrows hopefully.

Ann shakes her head.

“All I want is to be distracted,” she says. “You want to come in and eat ice-cream and annoy me by pointing out all the sexist tropes in the romcom I just hired?”

Leslie puts away her binder, and if the motion is a little reluctant, her smile is sincere.

“Sounds great.”

 

4.

Leslie is so easily and completely who she is that sometimes it takes Ann’s breath away.

 

5.

Ann’s boyfriend wants to propose, and he best friend persuades him to do it on live community access television. Ann wants to break up; her exuberant and sleep deprived best friend has to talk him out of it again. At the end of the night, it’s Leslie on Ann’s couch listening to her vent and cry. It’s Leslie passing out for 28 straight hours and waking sleepy and smiling with a permanent marker mustache on her face.

Ann’s heart flips over, a little.

 

6.

“Can you ever imagine doing something like that?” Ann asks, fiddling with an old picture of Andy she’d found between the couch cushions a few months after she’d purged all his stuff. “Eloping the way he and April did…”

Leslie looks from the photo to Ann’s face and confiscates it immediately.

“Is it technically eloping? They did get married without telling anyone else, but they brought the wedding to them. I think linguistically speaking it should really be called something else.”

“They’ve barely been dating a month.” Ann says. “How are you of all people so calm about it? Where are all the lectures about April throwing her future away?”

Leslie looks for a moment like she’s about to say something, but then she shrugs, crumples up the photo of Andy and drops it in the trash.

“We’d only known each other a month before we became best friends.”

“Yeah, and then you gave me a friendship bracelet and a homemade card informing me of this fact and I didn’t have much say in the matter.”

“And you treasure those items with all your heart!”

“I do,” Ann says, trying to infuse the statement with an extreme level of sarcasm she’s not sure she feels.

Leslie smiles. “Sometimes you just know.”

 

7.

“Waffles?” Ann offers.

It’s the weekend again, but Leslie’s got a project to work on today, so she’s operating about 78% better than she usually is this early on her day off. Her feet are curled up under her on the couch and Ann’s coffee table is no longer her own, with Leslie’s highlighted documents and notes strewn all over it. Leslie beams up at her and shifts one of the binders to make room.

“You’re the best, Ann,” she says.

And Ann’s always thought that moments like this were supposed to be huge, intense occasions - romance sweeping you off your feet, eloquent and heartfelt confessions - but suddenly none of that matters in the wake of how right it feels.

“I love you, Leslie.”

“I love you too, Ann,” Leslie says, going back to scanning through her notes.

“No, Leslie…” Ann sits down beside her, and waits for Leslie to look back at her. “I _love_ you.”

It takes a moment, and then Leslie’s eyes go wide, and Ann’s heart is pounding and she’s afraid she might throw up. Maybe this was a mistake, maybe she never should have said anything…

And then Leslie’s kissing her, and it’s the simplest thing in the world.

Ann’s been in love before, and she’s been kissed before, and it’s ridiculous to act like this is some kind of revelation. But there’s no one quite like Leslie, so it makes a perfect kind of sense that this is like nothing Ann’s ever felt before.

“I do still really have to do this project, though,” Leslie says, pulling back.

Ann laughs and hits her shoulder affectionately. “How long _have_ we been married, really? I feel like someone should have told me.”

She gets up to make another round of coffee, taking Leslie’s empty mug with her.

“Hey Ann?” Leslie calls after her. “I love you too.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise when Ann ends up kissing her again, or when Leslie pulls her down over the back of the couch to keep making out, both of them giggling helplessly, but they both pretend it is. Anyway, Ann figures, they have their whole lives ahead of them for her to watch Leslie throw herself into her work. Just this once, the project can wait.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Seven Unconnected Thoughts About Marriage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7775911) by [wethethousands (atlantisairlock)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/wethethousands)




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